A New Way of Using Money

An Idea

If I had, let’s call it, “lots and lots of money” (i.e. more
than I would spend on my own present endeavors), I would give it to people who
give me energy. If you enhance the quality of my life, I pay you.

The catch is, I wouldn’t need this to happen in some formal
setting. This wouldn’t have to occur in the context of me buying something from
someone else. If you and I have some sort of interaction or exchange, and I’m
better off for it, I would like to pay you.

How does that sound?

Paying
Producers Extra

Allow me to explain further. I’ll start with more
conventional examples, and work my way down to the more
socially-unconventional.

Let’s say that I read a great book that bestows me with a
bounty of useful ideas, insights, and inspiration. I wouldn’t want to give the
author just whatever royalties he gets on that one copy of the book, largely
because I know that doesn’t amount to much money. It certainly doesn’t amount
to the amount of money I’d like to give him.

If it’s a $20 print book that’s traditionally published, he
might make roughly $10 from it (I don’t know for sure). If it’s a digital self-published
book, then he could potentially get all $20, depending on how he distributes it
(as a side-note, if you go through Amazon like I did with What is a Real Life?, you would make $7 for every $20 e-book
sold).

Now, if this book changes my life, why in God’s name would I
only want to give the author $10? I want to send that guy at least $50. And
that’s just from my current perspective. When I reach the point of considering
$50 to be chump change, I imagine I’d want to send even more.

What matters to me here is that if I send money to the
author directly, he gets every cent that I want him to have. This way we both
win.

I have done this before. Earlier this year I read 8 books
from the Conversations with God series
by Neale Donald Walsch. I borrowed them all from a library, so no one made any
money on my doing this.

I really enjoyed the books, and I wanted to compensate Neale
for what he has created. I went to his website with the hope of finding some
sort of donation button (like I have on my site) that would allow me to
send money to him directly. I found many donation buttons, though from what I
could tell the money all went to charities that he was involved with, rather
than himself. One of the charities bought Neale’s books for people who are in
jail. I liked the idea, so I donated money to it.

I would have liked to give money to Neale himself, too. My
impression is that he is rather wealthy, and he probably would have preferred
that I give the money to one of his charities. So I guess this worked out
alright, though I certainly would like to compensate him further.

I’d do the same thing with farmers. If I buy a head of
broccoli from a guy every week, he’s ultimately not going to make much money
off of me. But if this person is feeding me, I want to give him more money than
the cost of broccoli. So, provided I knew and/or could find out the person who
grew the food I’m eating, I would buy the food from him and give him some extra to keep for himself. This way the feeding
of broccoli to Kim can continue.

The incentive to do this, in the case of the farmer, is
greater if the food I’m buying is of higher quality—for instance, organic and
local. If a person can consistently deliver me high-quality food, I want to pay
him more than the cost of the food. If he lives in the same community as me,
and he’s simply a cool guy, those are pluses.

Paying for
Inspiration—in All Places

“If… he’s simply a cool guy,” leads to the next piece of
this—the unconventional piece. This is in regards to people who I haven’t
explicitly done business with, such as by buying goods from them or agreeing to
pay them for a service. This is about paying people who have helped me
mentally, emotionally, and/or spiritually, and in an informal fashion.

Let’s say that you and I meet. We have a conversation, and
we hit it off. We’re both interested in the things we tell each other about,
and we get along well. Not only that, but I feel very trusting of you, and I’m
comfortable with talking to you about challenges I’m having. You listen
intently, share relevant thoughts and experiences of yours, and encourage me.
Ultimately, in that moment, you enhance the quality of my life. You raise my
spirits. You increase my energy.

Especially if this happened consistently, whereby I could
reliably go to you whenever I had a problem I wanted to talk about, I would
definitely want to pay you.

Now, this is where social norms make things feel weird. You
might get it in your head that we aren’t really friends anymore: once the money
passes from my hand to yours, you become my unofficial life coach or therapist
or something of the sort. You might think that it’s your job to play this role
in my life. You may very well expect me to pay you again. Hell, you might even
start to charge me every time I want
to talk to you about the intimate details of my life.

But let’s question those social norms. What really would be
so damaging or friendship-corroding about me paying you? When I step outside
the context of social conventions, I don’t see how the introduction of money
into a relationship inherently creates problems.

The real problem is the way that we as humans relate to
money, which is kind of weird. We want it- lots of it- yet we consider it to be
“dirty,” and we assume that people who do have lots of it had to do dishonorable
things in order to get it. We regard money much the same way we regard sex. It’s
great, but if you have a lot of it you’re simultaneously envied and frowned
upon. Lots of people indirectly spew their bitterness at you.

Incidentally, if you exchange money for sex, you will find
your ass behind metal bars. I suspect this is no mere coincidence.

Anyway, I’ll give you another example. The article A
Return With Love recounted my going back to college in Spring 2016 after
taking a semester off (just so you know, there is no school in my life right
now). I talked about being distressed while making my class schedule because I
was basically deciding between a bunch of classes that I didn’t want to take (I
ultimately found my way out of that).

While I was sitting at a school computer, considering my
options rather miserably, a man who had also just signed up for classes said
hello to me. Then we talked for an hour and a half, and I had a great time. All
of my worry had been left behind, and after we parted ways I had much more
clarity about my class situation—even though he and I didn’t talk about it at
all. The clarity came, to an extent, from feeling good about my life and being
in a state of joy.

If I saw that dude again, and I could get past the weirdness
of it all, I would pay him for that. Yes, for simply brightening my day. I feel
no obligation to do it. I just want to. He deserves it. He improved the quality
of my life. What the heck is better than that?

Now that I have said all these things, I know life is going
to test me. It’ll tease me. I’ll get the inclination that I ought to pay
someone, and I won’t do it because, “Oh, it’s too weird,” I’ll say, or, “Nah—it’ll
ruin the purity our friendship.” Or, worse, “The other person might turn into a
kook and start trying to extract every cent from me they can. I’ll pass.”

That will go on for a while, until one day I finally get the
thought to pay someone and I actually offer them money. It will be strange when
this happens, yet it will be one of those unforgettable moments of life when
you’re doing something totally outside of your comfort zone and you feel so
alive. It’ll be kinda scary, and it will be great. I’ll love it. And as long as
the other person takes my damn money when
I give it to them, I’m sure they’ll love it, too. :)

The biggest area of uncertainty I see with this idea is in
physically intimate relationships. I suppose I would feel strange about paying
someone who I have slept with at some point or another, unless it’s an explicit
business transaction (e.g. paying them to fix the roof of my house). I won’t
over-analyze that issue here, though. It will get sorted out with experience…
Eventually.

Yes, that is the other piece of this. Not only do I have to
get past the social conventions that suppress this idea—I also have to get past
my own inhibitions around having and spending money. At this point in time it’s
hard for me to walk the financial talk I’m making here. Yet, I have a feeling
that if I just lean into this desire, that will change. It’s just a feeling,
but I can believe it.

The reasoning I can give in support of that feeling is this:
money is attention in physical form. Whatever you give money to expands in your
reality. So, if I give money to things that I find valuable, then I am funding
the continued creation of that value. Therefore, even more of that value can
come into my life. So it’s a positive feedback loop of giving money and
receiving value: the more I give, the more I receive. And when you regard money
as simply being a form of energy, then it doesn’t really matter who’s giving
what. It’s all giving. It’s all value that’s getting passed around— you feel
cared for, and so you fund things that you care about. Thus, let your cashflow be an extension of your
caring.

All in all, there’s no backing out of this idea. I’m not
saying you should adopt it, but for my part this must be explored. It’s too interesting
and compelling. It draws me in.

Where will I start, I wonder…

~

By the way, I am ever so sorry if you were hoping this was
an article about digital currency, such as Bitcoin. I see the potential of
this, and I think its ability to be exchanged across the Internet in very small
quantities (such as 1 cent—or even less) will contribute to this “informal
economy” I’ve proposed here. I definitely will explore digital currency at some
point.

Also, I must ask that you don’t start trying to be really
nice to me with the hope that I’ll pay you. If you do that, I’ll charge you.
Joke’s on you. ;)